organization:american indian movement

Verso - The Radical origins of international indigenous representation - ▻https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4329-the-radical-origins-of-international-indigenous-representation

While Indigenous representation has become a permanent feature at the UN, its radical origins are less well known. The historic 1977 Geneva gathering was preceded by a simpler, but no less monumental, gathering in Standing Rock, along the banks of the Missouri River. In the heat of the Northern Plains summer, 5,000 people from more than ninety-seven different Indigenous nations met from June 8 to 16, 1974. By the end of the week, the International Indian Treaty Council was founded as an international arm of the American Indian Movement (AIM), tasked with gaining international recognition at the UN for Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. The Treaty Council’s founding document, the “Declaration of Continuing Independence,” foregrounded nationhood and treaty rights as central features of an American Indian political identity. “We condemn the United States of America for its gross violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty in militarily surrounding, killing, and starving the citizens of the Independent Oglala Nation into exile,” it read, in reference to the brutal crackdown on AIM following their occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. The Treaty Council appealed to “conscionable nations” to join “in charging and prosecuting the United States of America for its genocidal practices against the sovereign Native Nations; most recently illustrated by Wounded Knee 1973 and the continued refusal to sign the United Nations 1948 Treaty on Genocide.”2 Following the seventy-one-day siege, AIM leadership had been arrested and tied up in court proceedings. Then came the brutal repression under the infamous FBI Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) that nearly destroyed Indigenous, Black, and revolutionary movements in the United States. The strategic turn to international human rights law largely saved the Indigenous movement from utter collapse in a moment of intense state repression.

#peuples_autochtones #internationalisme #standing_rock

Sky Roosevelt-Morris: The Secret of Indigenous Resiliency
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/sky-rooseveltmorris-the-secret-of-indigenous-resiliency

Activist Sky Roosevelt-Morris is of the Shawnee and White Mountain Apache Nations. She is a member of the Leadership Council of the American Indian Movement of Colorado. In this excerpt, from the...

The Empire Files: Fighting at Standing Rock with AIM Founder Dennis Banks · Videos teleSUR
▻http://videos.telesurtv.net/en/video/599755/the-empire-files-599755

A historic gathering is taking place against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock. Thousands of people, and around 300 Native nations, have gathered to stop Big Oil’s pipeline, which threatens sacred Native grounds and the environment. To give an eyewitness account of this growing movement, as well as essential historical context, Abby Martin interviews legendary Native leader Dennis Banks. Banks is a founder of of the American Indian Movement (AIM), a leader in the 1973 Wounded Knee standoff and many other actions over five decades.

#dakota_access_pipeline #Standing_Rock #Wounded_Knee #Dennis_Bank

The US Will Prosecute For Your Politics
▻http://www.mintpressnews.com/us-will-prosecute-politics/200541

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A history of repression
In 1978, then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young told the French newspaper Le Matin that the U.S. has “hundreds of people that I would categorize as political prisoners in our prisons.”

While the exact number of political prisoners in the U.S. is unknown, the National Jericho Movement, a movement that aims to gain recognition of the fact that political prisoners and prisoners of war exist within the U.S., lists 60 current political prisoners on its website.

The list includes First Nations political prisoners, including Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), who was convicted in 1977 of killing two FBI agents. Currently serving two consecutive life sentences, Peltier maintains that he is innocent. Amnesty International has stated that “political factors may have influenced the way in which the case was prosecuted.”

The list also includes people involved in the black liberation movement, including Mumia Abu-Jamal and Sundiata Acoli. Abu-Jamal was convicted in 1982 of the murder of a police officer, but maintains that he was framed. Acoli, a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, was sentenced to life in prison in 1974 for murdering a New Jersey state trooper. The International Jurist, an outlet that “publishes perspectives and opinions on the current state of international law and its future,” declared Acoli a political prisoner in 1979.

Marshall “Eddie” Conway, a former political prisoner, was released in March after spending 44 years in prison after being convicted of murdering a police officer. Conway, a former member of the Black Panther Party, told MintPress that he was framed for the killing of a police officer because he exposed an agent provocateur in the Black Panther Party.

“I was targeted by COINTELPRO because of that exposure. I ended up being swept up in an arrest that involved two other Panthers in the killing of a police officer,” he said, explaining that he was framed and that a police informant was used to validate the arrest.

FBI documents confirm murder of activist missing for 40 years
▻http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/federal-court/fbi-documents-confirm-murder-of-activist-missing-for-40-years-20140217

For the first time since her husband went missing 40 years ago, Cheryl Robinson can go to bed at night knowing what happened to the man she and her kids want so desperately to find.

The only questions now are why was he killed and where is he buried.

Robinson always suspected her husband, civil rights activist Ray Robinson, was murdered at Wounded Knee, S.D., where he had gone to support the American Indian Movement (AIM) in its fight against the federal government.

She also suspected he was killed because someone believed he was a government informant.

Thanks to the work of two Buffalo lawyers, Robinson now knows that her husband, a disciple of Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson, was shot to death, and that the FBI suspects the killers were members of AIM.

When asked about the allegations that it used informants at Wounded Knee and might be withholding evidence in an effort to protect them, Boosalis said the FBI could not comment.

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Wounded Knee, 1890 – 1973 in photos
▻http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2014/01/02/wounded-knee-1890-1973-photos/6496

Events at the site of the 1890 massacre again captured the nation’s attention on February 27, 1973 when nearly 200 activists from the American Indian Movement (AIM) seized the community of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The siege lasted 71 days as activists briefly held 11 hostages and exchanged gunfire with FBI agents and U.S. marshals. The site was specifically chosen by AIM leaders Russell Means and Dennis Banks to protest living conditions, uninvestigated crimes against Indian people and the federal government’s violation of treaties. During the 71 day occupation, two AIM supporters were killed and a deputy marshal wounded.

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